Courting Her Highness_ The Story of Queen Anne - Jean Plaidy [83]
There was nothing to be done with Sarah in such a mood.
Soon John would leave for the battlefield and Sarah still refused to speak to him. No matter how he pleaded, how much he begged to be allowed to explain, she would not listen.
John’s only way of communicating with her was by means of letters. At first she refused to read them, but she thrust them into a drawer, knowing that she would do so later.
John could not understand this change in her. She had always been forceful and naturally was angry when Sunderland had told his lies, but he was bewildered by her refusal to listen to him. He was innocent. He wanted no one but Sarah; he was as completely fascinated by her now as he had been in the days of their courtship and early marriage. And she would not listen to him!
Sarah was a little astonished at herself. Deep in her heart she did not believe in this scandal. There was always scandal concerning people in high places. To be successful was to create envy; and no one in England could have more enemies than Sarah Churchill. She made little attempt to keep her friends and none to lose her enemies. She was married to the war hero who adored her. Her successful marriage was the envy of all those who had failed to achieve such an ideal partnership. Therefore it was natural enough that those who had failed should seek to besmirch that which they could not emulate. In vain did John try to make her see this.
The truth was that Sarah had recently lost her son and almost immediately afterwards became pregnant. Unfortunately this had ended in miscarriage, and the realization had come to Sarah that she was forty-five years old. She had no son. Would she ever have one now? She felt herself ageing; the change of life was upon her. The faint depression which had been with her since her miscarriage was affected by the gossip she had heard from Sunderland and John’s infidelity had not seemed the impossibility it would have, a little earlier.
She stayed at St. Albans nursing her misery. Henrietta showing quite clearly that she no longer cared for her mother’s opinion; Mary hating her because she had prevented that ridiculous romance; young Blandford dead. Anne and Elizabeth were pleasant creatures but Anne was married to the hateful Sunderland and who knew what he would do. And soon her beloved John would have left England and, since the death of Blandford, she had begun to wonder what greater blow could strike her. There was only one: the death of John himself. And now … there was this horrible gossip about him and the unknown woman.
She read one of the letters he had written:
“As for your suspicion of me as to this woman, that will vanish, but it can never go out of my mind the opinion you must have of me, after my solemn protesting and swearing, that it did not gain any belief with you. This thought has made me take no rest this night and will forever make me unhappy.”
The relationship was no longer perfect. This would always be between them. And worse still, she could not let herself believe that her dearest Marl still loved her.
“He must hate me,” she told herself, “because I stand between him and … that woman!”
Again he wrote to her:
“When I swear to you as I do that I love you, it is not dissembling. As I know your temper, I am very sensible that what I say signified nothing. However, I can forbear repeating what I said yesterday, which is that I have never sent to her in my life, and may my happiness in the other world as well as this depend upon the truth of this.”
It is true, she told herself. There could not be anyone else. Yet the scandals of him in his youth were true enough. He had been a philanderer then.
He was begging her to come back to him. He was reminding her that the time was short and that he could not long delay his departure. She must come back to him, live with him as his wife, believe in him.
“If the thought of the children that we have had, or aught else that has ever been dear to us,